Sunday, November 16, 2008

Farewell TRL

Today is a day for the history books, TRL's grand finale episode. I was a HUGE Carson Daly fan back in the day and I remember vividly his shows MTV Live (which was awesome and I miss terribly) and Total Request - which then were combined into Total Request Live. TRL premiered in September of my sophomore year of high school, aka I was their target audience and I largely reaped the benefits of it. I watched the show everyday for Carson - I thought he was so cute and funny. I got into the TRL battles for top spot - although I don't think I ever voted.

I actually had the pleasure of being on TRL twice. I was on nearly 7 years ago to the day...I believe it was November 12 of 2001 - my freshman year of college. I went as part of a trip since NYC was only about 1.5 hours away. I got to see my hottie Carson in the flesh - he was MUCH MUCH cuter in person. I got a nice amount of camera time and even got to be one of the screaming teens "requesting the video" in the little pop up box while the video was playing - for the record it was POD's Alive. The guests that day were Martin Lawrence and Daniel Radcliffe - it was right before the first Harry Potter came out and Daniel was so NERVOUS...it was precious.

The second time I was on the show was when Maroon5 made their TRL debut and since I was a hardcore Maroon5 fan from back in the day I was invited to the show. This was January 2003. I can't remember now if Carson was the host at the time or not, I'll have to look at the tape, yes the VHS tape I have with both episodes on it. It was cool because I has been to enough Maroon5 shows from when they were still playing smokey bars that I "knew" them. I remember I was near Adam Levine's bro in the audience and one of the guys girlfriends. Adam has just cut his hair and I remember telling him I liked it. This taping of TRL was different because Maroon5 played 2 songs so between commercials we'd have to move around from our seats to standing for the concert.

FYI the TRL studio is TINY...it seems bigger on TV, but it really is like someone's living room. The view of Times Square from there is pretty sweet. It's been a long while since I've sat down to watch TRL... as I was reading about tonight TRL finale one report wrote that perhaps TRL is going off the air because "Internet killed the Video Star." I thought that was clever and true. I must admit that I STILL don't have cable in my apartment and I really don't miss it all that much. I see about 90% of what I want to see on-line anyway. God bless youtube - although I have watched a lot on youtube even before I didn't have cable. So the 15 year old girl inside me is sad to not watch the TRL finale tonight, but I also know that I will be able to watch parts of it online tomorrow.

Carson Daly much love to you and the original "Dog and Pony Show"

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that today is Freddie's first birthday!!!!!!!! For those of you out of the loop Freddie is my cute little Pomeranian.